Wednesday, July 1, 2015

Minimum income will be tested again

"A group of people already receiving welfare will get monthly checks ranging from around €900 ($1,000) for an adult to €1,300 ($1,450) for
a couple or family per month. Out of the estimated 300 people
participating, a group of at least 50 people will receive the
unconditional basic income and won’t be subject to any regulation, so
even if they get a job or find another source of income, they will still
get their disbursement, explained Nienke Horst, a project manager for
the Utrecht city government. There will be three other groups with
different levels of rules, and a control group that will follow the
current welfare law, with its requirements around job-seeking and
qualifying income.

The experiment seeks to challenge the notion that
people who receive public money need to be patrolled and punished, said
Horst. The traditional criticism of basic income is that it does not
incentivize people to work, and thereby damages the economy."

I'm becoming a strong believer in the idea of a universal minimum income. Hopefully more research and experiments will be done to test this idea.